Antonin Magne

Antonin Magne
Personal information
Full name Antonin Magne
Nickname Tonin le sage (Tonin the Sage), Tontin le taciturne (Tonin the Taciturn)[1]
Born (1904-01-15)15 January 1904
Ytrac, France
Died 8 September 1983(1983-09-08) (aged 79)
Arcachon, France
Team information
Discipline Road
Role Rider
Major wins

Grand Tours

Tour de France
General Classification (1931, 1934)
10 stages

One-day races and Classics

Road Race World Championships (1936)
Grand Prix des Nations (1934, 1935, 1936)
Infobox last updated on
24 May 2008

Antonin Magne (pronounced: [ɑ̃.tɔ.nɛ̃ maɲ]; 15 February 1904 8 September 1983) was a French cyclist who won the Tour de France in 1931 and 1934. He raced as a professional from 1927 to 1939 and then became a team manager. The French rider and then journalist, Jean Bobet, described him in Sporting Cyclist as "a most uninterviewable character" and "a man who withdraws into a shell as soon as he meets a journalist." His taciturn character earned him the nickname of The Monk when he was racing.

Professional cycling career

Magne was part of the Alleluia Team which, with Pierre Magne, Julien Moineau, Marius Gallotini, Arsène Alancourt, and André Cauet, won the 1927 GP Wolber, considered the unofficial world road race championship.

Magne first rode the Tour in 1927, alongside André Leducq in the France team. His two victories in the Tour had a dramatic quality because of the crashes, falls, bad luck and competition that he faced. He crashed in 1931 and was repeatedly attacked by the Italian Pesanti and the Belgian, Jef Demuysere. He finished the race so exhausted that he didn't start again next year. In 1934 he won again with the help of René Vietto, Georges Speicher and Roger Lapébie. Magne was the first rider to win a time trial in the Tour de France, over 80 km from La Roche-sur-Yon to Nantes in 1934.

In 1936 he came second in the Tour and then won the world championship on the road.

He won the Grand Prix des Nations, the unofficial world championship of the individual time trial, in 1934, 1935 and 1936.

1934 Tour de France

Magne led from the second day and his team won 19 of the 23 stages. His hopes looked over when he broke a wheel on the descent from l'Hospitalet to Ax-les-Thermes in the Pyrenees. He was rescued by the youngest rider in his team, René Vietto, who handed him his own wheel despite being in third place himself. Next day Magne again had trouble. Vietto was just ahead of him on the Col de Portet d'Aspet, turned and saw his leader waving a wheel and rode back down the hill to hand him his own. Vietto wept by the roadside as he waited for another wheel. Magne won the Tour and France dominated it but Vietto, who finished fifth, was the hero.

Post-racing career

Upon retirement, Magne became a directeur sportif for several successful riders, such as Louison Bobet and Raymond Poulidor in the Mercier team. He is credited with being a mentor to the great riders of the era, and is considered to be one of the best directeurs sportif in the sport. He never referred to his riders by the informal "tu" but always as "vous"; riders addressed him a "Monsieur Magne". Louis Caput replaced Antonin Magne as manager of Fagor-Mercier in 1970.

Magne lived for much of his life at Livry-Gargan, in the département of Seine-Saint-Denis near Paris. In 2004, the Tour de France honoured the centenary of his birth with a stage finish there. Magne was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1962.

Major results

1927
Tour de France
6th overall
Stage 14 win
GP Wolber (as part of the Alleluia team)
1928
Tour de France
6th overall
Stage 13 and 21 wins
1929
Circuit des villes d'eaux d'Auvergne
Tour de France
7th overall
1930
Tour de France
3rd overall
Stage 12 win
Paris–Roubaix
3rd overall
Paris-Vichy
1931
Tour de France
1st overall
16 days in maillot jaune
Stage 9 win
1933
Tour de France
8th overall
2nd mountains
1934
Tour de France
1st overall
23 days in maillot jaune
Stage 17 and 21b wins
Grand Prix des Nations
1935
Grand Prix des Nations
1936
Tour de France
2nd overall
Stage 20b win
World Cycling Championship
Grand Prix des Nations
1938
Tour de France
8th overall
Stage 10c and 21 wins

Grand Tour results timeline

1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938
Giro DNE DNE DNE DNE DNE 34 DNE DNE DNE DNE DNE DNE
Stages won 0
Mountains classification N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Tour 6 6 7 3 1 DNE 8 1 DNF-7 2 DNE 8
Stages won 1 2 0 1 1 0 2 0 1 2
Mountains classification N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 2 6 NR 5 NR NR
Vuelta N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A DNE DNE N/A N/A
Stages won
Mountains classification
Legend
1 Winner
2–3 Top three-finish
4–10 Top ten-finish
11– Other finish
DNE Did Not Enter
DNF-x Did Not Finish (retired on stage x)
DNS-x Did Not Start (no started on stage x)
DSQ Disqualified
N/A Race/classification not held
NR Not Ranked in this classification

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 12, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.